Vital Insight Into Management Training Success

In business, it’s usually more valuable to develop a long-term customer relationship than to make a one-time sale. But, if your team is too focused on closing the deal and pushing products, they’re going to have difficulty developing that all-important relationship with your customers.

A customer-oriented sales approach is the key to increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty and business. Instead of forcing your products and services on prospects, your reps should be thinking about identifying customer needs and working to solve those problems.

Consider the following ways to improve your sales team’s success through customer-oriented selling.

When a company seeks to grow its current client base or increase profits, the first impulse is often to invest in pricey marketing efforts or bulk up the sales team. But, in reality, these may not be the solution.

In many cases, it’s more effective to turn your focus inward and examine the customer service skills of your employees. Here are a few statistics that illustrate this point and put the value of customer service into perspective:

• 84% of customers say their expectations were not exceeded during their last customer service interaction.
• Approximately 64% of consumers take their business elsewhere after having a poor customer service experience.
• It costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a current one.

Workplace diversity is a rising trend in our country. According to the Center for American Progress, women account for almost half of today’s workforce, and people of color make up nearly a third of American workers.

Gender, age, race, background and many other types of diversities make for a rich company culture. These differences also allow for fresh perspectives and new ideas that benefit your organization as a whole.

But, they also present a number of challenges for your management team. Don’t allow these difficulties to impede your company from taking advantage of workplace diversity. Consider these four secrets to managing a diverse workforce more effectively.

We’ve all experienced the difficult customer. (Maybe we’ve even been one!) They argue. They complain. They may even yell.

Since your customer service team members are likely to encounter difficult customers, knowing how to deal with them is vital to your company’s success. Explore five customer service training solutions to help your team members satisfy unhappy customers.

When workplace performance isn’t improving like it should, you know you have a management training problem to address – and soon. If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.

Overcoming ineffective leadership is a challenge, especially when training program participants are snoozing during their sessions. If you want leaders to step up their game with greater productivity, better management skills and a contribution to higher employee morale, you need professional development training that engages.

So, how do you enable your team to get the most out of a training program?

Start by making the training more fun. To provide an enjoyable experience with tangible results, make sure your employee training program comprises these techniques. 

It’s a frustrating experience to choose a workplace training program and not see the improvement in employee productivity that you were expecting. Many programs promise to cover important subjects, but are they engaging enough to hold your team’s attention?

Online learning is on the rise with new and exciting resources for optimizing employee training programs. With the insurgence of smartphone usage, mobile learning is also gaining popularity. But, as many teachers will tell you, there’s often no replacement for classroom learning.

So, how do you decide which option is best for your professional development training program, ensuring that employees are engaged and have convenient access to learning materials? The good news: You don’t have to choose just one.

Workplace training equips businesses to build a powerhouse of employees with exceptional talents and skill sets. But, not every training program gives participants the tools they need.

You’ve got to stay at the forefront of innovation to ensure that your employee training program teaches skills that are both relevant and effective. Here are techniques you should use to promote a truly leading-edge training program. 

When you’re facing a transition within your company, you want to know that your managers are capable of leading and managing the change. 

Before you roll out any change initiative, take the following steps to ensure that your managers are adequately prepared and have the tools they need to be successful.

Are your managers ready for the next step? What about your future managers? Are they prepared to move up?

Take a step back from your daily work and look at the big picture. When your leadership people retire or move on, you need reliable, effective managers to fill those gaps. Succession planning saves you time, money and headaches on moving team members into top management roles.

To get your employees in a good position to take over, the first step is to conduct a management readiness assessment. The assessment should evaluate your team’s management skills and identify any gaps that need to be filled by management training courses.

Before you can decide what management training tools you need to invest in, you have to know what areas within your company require the most work.

Change in the workplace isn’t easy. It’s difficult on employees, and it often impacts the overall productivity of your company. In fact, 60 to 70 percent of change management initiatives fail. 

So, you might be thinking: Why even bother with change at all? But, you don’t have to feel this way.

Some of the reasons why change management has a low success rate include:

• Lack of communication prior to the transition
• Not enough preparation before moving forward 

Find out how to avoid these pitfalls in your approach to change management.